Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayGift audiobook credit bundles
You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and your local bookstore is supported by your purchase.
Start giftingThirty-Eight Witnesses
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreSummary
On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally beaten and murdered in the street near her apartment, in full view of more than three dozen friends and neighbors—and no one did a thing to stop it. More than thirty-five years after its first publication, Thirty-Eight Witnesses , the true account of what transpired that night in Queens, New York, continues to disturb us. We would like to think that we would step in and do what we could to stop the carnage. But not much has changed in the ensuing years, as crime goes on all around us and we do nothing to help.
Pulitzer Prize–winning New York Times reporter A. M. Rosenthal covered the case for the paper as its city editor, and his chronicle of the events became this book. Part memoir, part investigative journalism, part sociological study, a disturbing story of urban apathy, Thirty-Eight Witnesses puts readers on the gritty sidewalk of the murder scene and speaks of the need for change. In the ensuing years, the case has become famous, and today in criminology classes, students learn about witnesses and the Genovese Effect. A new foreword discusses the historical legacy of the case and how little has changed in fifty-plus years.